Public Broadcasting: A Strategy for Cross-Media Success

Public service broadcasters (PSBs) are facing an uphill battle to stay relevant in an always-on, borderless, fast-paced digital world. To remain viable, they need to become leading providers of high-quality content while fulfilling their mandate to provide public service.

This doesn’t mean abandoning the traditional business of delivering national and regional television programming. Rather, PSBs should strengthen their online activities to become integrated providers of content across all media platforms and extend their offerings across multiple channels to reach every age group.

PSBs can do this by:

Measuring touchpoints. A touchpoint is a single contact with any media platform during a 30-minute activity. Measuring this metric allows public broadcasters to map the media journey of consumers throughout the day and generate new insights into what really makes content relevant to target audiences. This activity gives broadcasters a comparable view of how media are consumed across platforms and enables them to capture parallel usage.

Fine-tuning the content portfolio. Once PSBs understand the unique consumption behavior of all target groups, they need to aggressively refine their content portfolios.

Responding to genre economics. By analyzing the cost versus benefit for each genre and subgenre, PSBs can assess how much it costs to reach a certain level of consumption per genre and how much of that cost can be financed through advertising, sponsorship, or licensing fees.

Building cross-media capabilities and structures. PSBs need to break down the conventional silo structures that separate television, radio, print, and online media, and then integrate each platform throughout the organization. That way, PSBs can build cross-media capabilities in everything from market research and advertising to innovation and human resources.

Making funding sustainable. By adopting a more analytical approach to investments, PSBs can achieve significant costs savings and generate new revenues through cross-media advertising. PSBs should also seek out revenues beyond pure programming, such as video-on-demand services, second-service offerings, and online gaming. At the same time, PSBs that maintain their relevancy will be in a stronger position to sustain support for public funding.

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